PrepTest 154, Section 4, Question 5
Professor: During election years, voters often feel that(48 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(13 more words not shown)
- AThe newspapers that(23 more words not shown)
- BMany newspapers that(15 more words not shown)
- CMost regular subscribers(17 more words not shown)
- DMany of the(16 more words not shown)
- EMost voters get(13 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Subscribing to a newspaper doesn't mean you read its election coverage.
That could explain the surprising result. We'd expect people whose papers cover election issues extensively to know more about those issues than people whose papers barely cover them. But the studies find no such advantage. Notice the comparison: both groups subscribe to newspapers. What differs is how much election coverage their papers provide.
Maybe the extensive coverage goes unread. Maybe people get their election information online, so their choice of newspaper makes little difference. Or perhaps even a paper with brief coverage includes the important headlines, giving its readers the information they need. These are different possible explanations; we only need an answer that helps make the result less surprising.
What we’re looking for
Keep that precise result in view when we read the choices. We aren't explaining why some voters feel uninformed, or why some people don't subscribe. We're explaining why more coverage hasn't translated into better-informed subscribers.
Working the answers
- A
How many subscribers a paper has is different from how informed its subscribers are. A paper could have a small readership whose members learn a great deal from it. Smaller circulation doesn't explain why those readers get no apparent advantage from the extensive election coverage.
- B
This describes a change in what some newspapers publish. But the study already compares papers currently offering extensive coverage with papers offering little coverage. Knowing that some papers used to publish more doesn't explain why the current difference fails to produce better-informed readers.
- CCorrect
This fits the possibility that the coverage goes unread. Most subscribers to the papers with extensive coverage rarely read the relevant articles. Having more information delivered doesn't help much if people don't use it.
The answer doesn't tell us everything about the other group or prove exactly why the two groups end up equally informed. But it removes the main reason we expected an advantage: access to extensive reporting isn't the same as learning from it. That's enough to help explain the surprising result. We shouldn't reject a useful explanation merely because it doesn't supply the entire story.
- D
These voters don't subscribe to newspapers. Our comparison is between two groups who do subscribe. What happens among nonsubscribers doesn't explain why subscribers to papers with extensive coverage fail to know more than subscribers to other papers.
- E
This sounds like our thought about other information sources, but the scope matters. Most voters isn't necessarily either of the subscriber groups in the study. And even someone getting most information elsewhere might learn additional things from a newspaper. E doesn't show that the extensive coverage fails to give these subscribers an advantage. C directly addresses that group's failure to use the extra coverage.
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